February 9, 2007
Rest Day Hue: Perfume River trip
We have breakfast at the Mandarin Cafe, walk along the river bank and then wait at the travel agent for our tour to begin. With a small group we walk back to the river and board a "double" dragon boat, a catamaran style boat made out of two wooden hulls with an aluminum superstructure complete with kitchen and souvenir shop.
We head upriver, stop briefly at an old house with a nice garden and then for a longer stop at Thien Mu Pagoda. There is a nice tower and large compound behind. A large building is being restored. There is an old Austin car on display that drove the monk to Saigon that burned himself in 1963. Further upstream we visit Tu Duc tomb. It's a nice park like area that we reach on the back of a motorbike, about 2 km from the boat landing. The entrance fee is steep at 55,000Dong, but it's worth it at this one.
Back at the boat, then across the river to Han Chen Temple, a bit of a rip off at 22,000 Dong. We have lunch on the boat, then one more stop at Minh Mang tomb. We decide not to spend another 55,000 each to see this one, instead visit with two Australians and a British couple. The boat ride back to Hue is nice again. There are wooden boats anchored in the river. One person has a long bamboo pole with a bucket on the end that he pushes down in the river bottom at least 5 meters below the surface. Two or three people propel a winch with their hands and feet to haul the full bucket back up, it gets emptied in the boat and goes down again. A lot of hard work to get the boat filled. The sand is used as an aggregate for concrete.
We get back at 4pm east dinner at "little Italy", a very nice lasagna and pizza.
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